


A Stouter Reason to Stay

by SylvanWitch



Category: Sherlock (TV), Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Crossover, M/M, Pre-Slash, Walk Into A Bar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-17 06:10:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17554883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: All he wants is to enjoy his stout in peace and quiet.  Can't the Earth at least give him that?  Or, the time Sherlock Holmes helps Ronon Dex save the world.





	A Stouter Reason to Stay

**Author's Note:**

> From a fun meme challenge on Dreamwidth, where trobadora, on a blind draw, suggested that Ronon and Sherlock would have to save the world.

The charms of cosmopolitan London had waned for Ronon Dex, who after two days of sightseeing and two evenings of schmoozing with various representatives of the IOA had found only one thing he really liked.

 

That’s how it came to be that he’d slipped his so-called “security detachment”—laughably easy—and found his way to a quiet, dark side street where the houses were narrow and jammed together, the streets glittered darkly in the evening’s rain, and a pub with a flickering neon sign welcomed him in.

 

He was on his second pint of a dark, bitter drink the locals called “stout” that reminded him so powerfully of Athosian harvest festivals and their ceremonies celebrating both life and death that he almost ached to return to his own galaxy.

 

“You’re not from around here,” showed up often enough in the steady diet of movies Sheppard had been feeding him that Ronon knew to snort into his glass and ignore the man whose presence on his periphery he’d been aware of long before the man spoke.

 

“Oh, yes.  I can see how you’d take that the wrong way.  What I meant, of course, is that you aren’t from this planet,” dropping his volume at the last so the word was a mere suggestion over the low sounds of a television playing over the bar and the few patrons tucked into dark corners conspicuously minding their own business.

 

Those words got Ronon’s attention for real, and he raked the man beside him with a long, assessing look.  Tallish, lean, hair almost as ridiculous as Sheppard’s, with a pronounced predatory expression in his eyes all out of keeping with his otherwise almost fragile appearance.  Ronon figured the appearance was deliberately deceptive, and he turned enough on his barstool to open his stance, giving himself space to come off of it and use it as a weapon if he had to.  Sheppard hadn’t let him bring his gun on the plane.

 

“Don’t bother,” the man said, sliding onto a stool beside him.  “I’m not in the least bit interested in histrionics.”

 

Ronon hadn’t encountered that one on his word-a-day calendar yet, so he ignored it. “Why do you think I’m not a local?” he asked, and the evasion earned a little, approving smirk from the other.

 

“The neck tattoos could be tribal, but I’ve studied the markings of every known Earth tribe, and those are not among them.  They could be artistic license, and the scar at the base of your neck could suggest emergency field surgery in some forgettable conflict somewhere, except you drink stout like it’s a new experience—wholly new—and you looked, before I interrupted you, like a man whose thoughts were several quintillion miles away.”

 

Ronon shrugged.  “Everything you’ve described could mean I’m a mercenary in town for a little R & R.”

 

“Oh, I think you’re a hunter, of that I’ve little doubt—as dangerous as they come.  But your average mercenary in my world isn’t typically being hunted by careful men in nondescript SUVs with SAT phones and tactical gear like the ones waiting at both ends of this street and the one behind us.  Also, I called my brother, who has reason to know these things, and he told me who you were.”

 

“So, you cheated?”  Ronon had finished his lager and waved the barman off, using his empty glass to weigh down his payment for the drinks and a tip for the guy, who looked like he didn’t want any trouble but was about to get a great deal of it.

 

“I cheated,” the other man concurred, a manic twinkle in his eye.

 

“Ronon,” he said, coming off the stool and stepping into the narrow space between the bar and the tables.

 

“Sherlock,” the man answered, stepping a little behind and to one side of him, leaving him room to work but not taking himself out of the coming action and angling himself so he could watch the hallway that led to the back exit.

 

“Do you know what they want with me?” 

 

Sheppard had filled Ronon in on the underground factions who sought to undermine the global space initiative the IOA was in London to negotiate.  They varied widely from environmental terrorists out to preserve this planet by blocking man’s potential exits from it to homegrown nutjobs who believed Ronon and other offworlders were body-stealing monsters bent on taking over the world.

 

From what he’d seen of Earth so far, he didn’t think he’d want it.  Too crowded, no place he could just be alone.

 

“This particular faction is in it for the usual—money, of course, and power.  They’ll threaten to expose you to the world if they don’t get what they want.  Also, Mycroft wasn’t certain, but he suggested that their leader was interested in what you could tell him about alternate modes of time and space travel.  Ridiculous, of course.  One look at you, and the fool would know you’re not the engineering type.”

 

His pronouncement reminded Ronon of McKay, so much so that he had another pang of homesickness.  Yeah, he was definitely done with Earth.

 

“So, if they get their hands on me, what happens?”

 

“Mass panic, the destruction of tenuous alliances, potential world war.”  His tone suggested this was just another Friday night for him. 

 

Ronon smiled, more a baring of teeth than an expression of humor.  “Then how about we give them a little panic and destruction?”

 

When it was over—

 

—when two SUVs lit the night with orange flames, the heat of the fires creating a localized wind that tossed the leaves of the trees that lined the street

 

—when six men were dead, three in custody, one unaccounted for

 

—when four black cars had pulled up, disgorging a swarm of men and women dressed in discrete dark suits, the kind that went from door to door with a gas-leak story and a pained sorry-to-have-bothered-you smile

 

—when Sherlock was done having a quietly vicious conversation with a tall, heavyset man who shared a family resemblance (a little bit of shark around the eyes)

 

—when Ronon had already dislocated his thumbs and freed himself from the handcuffs some overzealous suited young man had put on him—

 

Sherlock approached.  “Crisis averted.”  He sounded almost disappointed.  His hair was disheveled, and there was a bruise rising on his left cheek.  The blood on his trenchcoat wasn’t his own, Ronon knew. 

 

“What now?” Ronon asked, knowing that any moment now, Sheppard would show up to whisk him away, probably delivering a sardonic, smirking lecture about getting along with the locals while he was at it.  He found that for as much as he’d earlier wanted to go back to Pegasus, he wasn’t quite ready to leave Earth just yet.

 

As if Sherlock had read the direction of Ronon’s thoughts, he smiled, all teeth and bad intentions, and said, “It happens I know a place…”

 

“Lead the way,” Ronon said, falling into step beside him.

 

Earth might have one thing even better than stout to keep Ronon around a little longer.

 


End file.
